Suboptimal diet is the single leading modifiable cause of poor health in the world. High fat intake causes obesity and increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases, type-2 diabetes mellitus, and cancer. The metabolic risks are related to ectopic fat deposition in the abdomen and the liver and are influenced by the intake of saturated fatty acids (SFA).
Moreover, the protective effects of replacing SFA with polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) have been demonstrated for coronary heart disease and for some cancers, especially when omega-3 PUFA are administered.
These points underscore the fact that obesity related diseases are caused not only by the total amount of fat, but also by visceral fat distribution and fatty acid composition.
Therefore, it is desirable to develop non-invasive methods to quantify the amount and composition of abdominal fat.
It is known from document WO 2012/061839 A2 techniques, apparatus and systems are described for using parameters including chain length, number of double bonds and number of double-double bonds of a complex, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-generated fat spectrum to determine the composition and properties of fat and to perform various diagnostic functions. In one aspect, a method using magnetic resonance imaging to characterize fat includes acquiring a magnetic resonance (MR) image that includes MR data from a target, determining fat characterization parameters based on the acquired MR data, and using the determined fat characterization parameters to produce a relationship between regions of fat and/or water in the MR image.
However, such technique does not provide with enough accuracy in the context of clinical magnetic resonance imaging systems.